


Start Quoting Shakespeare and We're Done (The Apple Pie Life Remix)

by Tyleet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-16
Updated: 2012-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-03 19:23:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Tyleet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Look,” she says, and her voice softens. "Didn't anybody ever warn you about the course of love not running smooth?" </p><p>Gabriel chuckles wearily. "You steal all my best lines."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Start Quoting Shakespeare and We're Done (The Apple Pie Life Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pyrebi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrebi/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Start Quoting Shakespeare and We're Done](https://archiveofourown.org/works/244582) by [pyrebi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrebi/pseuds/pyrebi). 



Gabriel has been letting Sam Winchester eat free chocolate and win at Halo and take shameless advantage of his listening ear and fuck him into the mattress almost every night for almost a year before he realizes it’s over.

This realization comes at around two in the morning at the Roadhouse, where Sam is apparently drunk and happy enough to decide that licking salt off the bartender’s wrist is a good idea. She’s short and dark-haired and sarcastic and loves french fries and movies about bloodsucking monsters—maybe those crazy kids will even make it work, he thinks cynically.

“That’s it,” Gabriel says loudly to Cas, who has, as usual, managed to stay mostly sober despite drinking everyone else under the table. Dean’s mostly asleep on his shoulder, one hand clasped around Cas’s waist, the other still loosely curled around a pint glass. It’s sickeningly saccharine, he thinks, with a bitter stab. “I’m done.”

Cas looks confused. As usual. “Done with what?”

Gabriel jerks his head over to the bar, where Sam is still licking salt off the girl’s wrist. She’s looking down at him with half-lidded eyes and a tiny smirk. Black-eyed bitch. 

Cas’s brow furrows as he stares at them. “I miss Jo,” he says finally. “Ruby and I don’t share the same kind of bond.” Gabriel rolls his eyes.

“Not Ruby,” he says pointedly. “Why would I be done with Ruby? Ruby serves the drinks, and I have no problem with people who serve me drinks, but—“

“—but Jo was nicer,” Castiel says a little wistfully, completely missing the point, also as usual. “I’m sure she’s happy at college, but I miss her, and I believe that Dean misses her, even if he would never say, and Ellen certainly––”

“It’s Sam,” Gabriel says impatiently. “It’s Sam, little Sammy Winchester, he who has walked in on you and your honey at least four times, brother of the guy you’re in love with. I’m done with him. Finished. Finito. He and I are through.”

Castiel gapes at him—actually gapes, like a fish. Gabriel nods, tossing some money down on the table.

“Tell him I left, okay?” he says, risking one last glance at Sam, who is still smiling at Ruby, blithe and oblivious, before strolling out of the bar and into a cab and then up to his apartment, where he doesn’t bother to turn on the lights or get undressed. He falls into bed with his boots on, flings an arm over his eyes, and utterly fails to sleep for the next seven hours.

*

At six he gives up and goes down to the kitchen.

He’s never really been a stress baker—baking is his passion, sure, but it’s also his job. He's done his best to make his work un-work-like––designing a World War II themed chocolaterie obviously speaks of a deep desire to make work as much like a game as possible, and he still feels a surge of pride whenever someone walks into _BOOM_ for the first time and jaw-drops at the to-scale B52 suspended from the ceiling, still likes handing out a sample H-bomb and saying "Blew you away, am I right?" But it's still, you know, what he does for a living, and being productive when he's in a shitty mood is never something Gabriel's been good at. When he’s stressed he likes to turn off his mind with dumb shit on tv, or with pretending to kill things. (Cheating at paintball can be deeply satisfying.) Yeah, he's not a stress baker.

Except that apparently today he is, which is just _annoying_ , yet another way Sam Winchester is messing with his head. He goes through his entire list of special orders, whips up a round of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot just because, and when Meg comes in at ten to open the shop, he smiles and jokes around and tells her that today, he’ll be taking a long lunch.

She bitches at him, naturally, but he waves it away and jogs back upstairs to grab his wallet and phone. There are two texts from Sam, sent about two hours earlier.

_Hey, you disappeared last night. Everything okay?_

and

_So, I’m headed to work, but could you call me at lunch? Cas just stumbled out of Dean's room and said you seemed upset when you left._

Gabriel deletes them with two fierce punches of his thumb, and hits speed dial one.

“Rudrani,” a smooth feminine voice answers, and yeah, this is what he needs. His girl, his girl Friday, even, his nemesis, his boyfriend’s boss, his token cutthroat-lawyer friend, his voice of reason, the one everyone knows can talk him off the ledge, his girl who always gets him. 

“Hey babe,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Do you have lunch plans?”

“Yes,” Kali answers, flatly.

“Cancel them,” he says cajolingly, and slides on a jacket. “What could be more important than lending a sympathetic ear to the light of your life and fire of your loins?”

“Money,” she says, and he can visualize her eyeroll perfectly. “Vast boatloads of money. Which is what a working lunch will give me, angel.” She says _angel_ the way she always says it, dripping with scorn and the weight of history: a half-fond, half-barbed reminder that the first time she'd met him, at midnight in a bar, he'd been unbelievably high and kept insisting that he'd fallen straight from heaven for a chance at getting into her blood-red dress. _Feel my wings_ , he'd told her, leering, and she'd rolled her eyes and said _Okay, angel, I'm calling you a cab, but you're paying for it_.

“You cut me to the quick,” Gabriel says, and then lets some of what he’s feeling creep into his tone. “But actually, Kali. Lunch?”

“Eleven thirty, at Dara Thai,” she says immediately. “Are you going to do anything crazy before then?”

“Me?” Gabriel asks, shooting for breezy, knowing he’s falling short. “Never.”

He hangs up over the sound of her snapping at him, and heads out the door. He waits until he’s out on the street to make the second call.  It goes straight to voice mail, which is what Gabriel expected—Sam never keeps his personal phone on at work. He actually waits for coffee breaks and lunch hours to check it, because he likes his job and he knows that Gabriel can make him lose hours and hours playing Words with Friends and he doesn’t like to get distracted.

“You’ve reached the voicemail of Sam Winchester. Leave your name and number and I’ll be sure to hit you back as soon as possible.”

There’s a beep, and all too soon, Gabriel has to start talking. “Hey, Sammy,” he says automatically, and then winces. “Sam,” he corrects himself. “Hey.” Well, now that he sounds like a total moron, he might as well get it over with. “I’ve been thinking,” he blurts out, defaulting to sarcasm, “that it’s about time we gave up the ghost. I know it’s kind of a dick move to pull this kind of thing over voicemail, but I’ve never pretended to be a nice guy.” Sam’s never wanted Gabriel to be a nice guy. Gabriel’s throat hurts. “It’s been great. Really, really great. Great me, great you, great—orgasms—but I think we both know that we’re heading downhill, and I’d—I guess I’d rather get off the ride now. So, uh. Say goodbye to the atom bombs,” he says, and his voice is going hoarse almost entirely against his will, “and the free coffee, and the double dates with your brother. Don’t hook up with Ruby,” he adds, because he can’t help it. “Meg says she has crabs. And Meg would know, if you know what I mean. Uh. Okay. I guess that’s it. Have a nice life, Sam. I’m sorry.”

He hangs up before he has a chance to regret it. Okay. That’s that, he tells himself. No more feeing this way. Snap out of it.

*

See, the thing is, Gabriel’s always been a little fucked on the head. He blames it on his family. That’s not a cheap excuse, it’s the truth. His dad had stuck around just long enough to play favorites—Lucy was the one he loved best, Michael came next, and Gabriel got all the leftover affection—and then he’d cut and run when Gabriel was thirteen. Cue four years of living in a warzone where everybody used Dad as a weapon and Gabriel was always collateral damage. His siblings are nasty pieces of work, really.

Gabriel ran when he was seventeen, and hasn’t spoken to either of them since, but all that head-fucking leaves you in a state of pretty much permanently screwed, in his experience. Gabriel knows all about his issues—his roommate in culinary school became a shrink, so he actually knows more about his issues than he wants to--fear of abandonment, a tendency to run before he gets left, self-destructive behavior, an instinctive distrust of anybody that looks like family. Just because he _knows_ he’s messed up doesn’t mean he can _do_ anything about it.

Case in point: as soon as Baldur, the shrink roommate, started pointing out Gabriel’s issues, he’d smiled and laughed and promptly skipped out on the lease and stopped taking his calls. They’d only started talking again after Baldur started dating Kali, and that’s because Kali is terrifying. The only reason his friendship with _her_ has lasted as long as it has is because he’s scared of her. Well. He's scared of her and he sincerely adores her, and she is sincerely annoyed by him but is willing to put up with amazing amounts of crap for all the free chocolate, and maybe it's the fact that he always feels vaguely like Kali is about to rip him into shreds that makes him comfortable around her. Which probably means that he’s going to end up old and alone and diabetic, with only Kali for grudging company. Anyway.

The first moment Sam Winchester had walked into his shop, he’d thought: oh, oh, beautiful. A few minutes of talking had made it worse—Sam was funny and slightly goofy and earnest and a lawyer, and he looked at Gabriel with these slanted warm eyes that definitely held interest, or possibility, some indefinable something that made Gabriel honest to god catch his breath. And then, because he was a ridiculous, self-denying little bastard, he’d handed Sam a sample truffle overstuffed with habañero. 

Sam had choked and turned beet red and started sweating, and Gabriel had pretended not to be completely fascinated and chuckled and said “A joke, just a little joke,” and Dean had cracked up, and Sam had narrowed his eyes and said “I’m going to get you for that,” and his tone made something crackle under Gabriel’s skin and when he said “Come back soon,” it came out maybe more fervently than he meant it.

*  
By eleven thirty, Gabriel has ignored three calls from Sam—he must have had a coffee break––and one, ominously, from Dean. Never mind that Dean had been completely supportive of Gabriel and Sam’s relationship from day one (Sam had still been choking on habñero the first time Dean had grinned and said “I like his style.”) Never mind that when Gabriel first hooked up with Sam and he’d decided to make him an _oh_ _hey, I’m banging your brother_ dinner, Dean had moaned out loud over his burger and announced “If this is, like, the modern version of offering a sheep for Sam’s virginity, I am completely and utterly cool with it.”  Because Dean loves three things in the world, and that’s Cas, his car, and his brother, and Gabriel’s always known that if he messed too much with any of those things, Dean would probably actually kill him.

He doesn’t listen to any of them.

Kali’s already there when he gets to the restaurant, and she looks pretty bleak.

“Baby,” he greets her, tiredly. “Ready to run away with me, yet?”

“I ordered for you,” she tells him, frowning. “You’re late.”

“Out saving the world,” he says, and drops into his chair.

She sighs. “So. Are you going to explain to me why one of the best junior lawyers I’ve ever had has spent the entire morning white as a ghost and half as responsive?”

“Sam’s upset?” Gabriel asks, playfulness dropping straight out of his tone.

Kali gives him a level look. “Winchester looks like someone ran over his puppy and then stole his date for junior prom.” She stirs her Thai iced tea. “And to be honest, you look worse. So what have you done?”

“Why assume it’s something I did?” Gabriel asks, staring down at his own water glass.

“Because you’re a highly strung little shit,” Kali says, and only someone who’s known her as long as Gabriel has would hear the affection creeping into her tone. “And I know betrayal when I see it.”

“He cheated on me,” Gabriel blurts out.

Kali sets her cup down, and abruptly Gabriel remembers why he’s terrified of her—he has to fight down the impulse to say _don’t hurt him_.

“He didn’t,” he says instead, dropping his head into his hands. “He wouldn’t. I just started thinking he might.”

Her sigh is deep and frustrated. “Again, Gabriel?”

“Yeah,” he says into his own fingers.

Kali won’t baby him with platitudes. It’s why he likes her. She won’t tell him that it’s fine, that things can still be fixed, that he just needs to deal with his problems and then everything will be fine. She manages to communicate all of that and more with a sigh.

“Did I fuck everything up forever?” he asks her, and looks up. It’s a ritual they started years and years ago, when Gabriel still thought he was straight, and tried to make out with her. The question’s always the same, and so is the answer.

She shrugs, the perfect picture of bored cynicism, but her eyes are kind. “Not yet.”

“Fuck,” Gabriel says, and rests his head on the tablecloth.

*

Gabriel got a little obsessed with Sam, for a period of—months. Many months. Sent him chocolates in the mail, lavished attention on him at the store, asked Kali to spy on him at work, that kind of thing. He’d really thought the chocolates would be enough to get Sam into bed—relationship issues aside, Gabriel really didn’t have a lot of trouble finding people to fuck, especially when they found out he came with free chocolate. And sex was easy—sex was fun, and never really as intimate as people made it out to be, in Gabriel’s experience. Sex was no problem.

But Sam didn’t taste his first H-bomb and fall into bed—at least not right away. Instead he started coming by the shop every few days after work, resting his briefcase on the counter, eating all the free candy Gabriel laid reverently before him, complaining about his brother, and his job, and his icy bitch of a boss (Gabriel was deeply amused, and never said anything.) Sam became a habit—the hot guy who never took him seriously, no matter how many times Gabriel sighed audibly over his fantastic dimples. Gabriel made a joke out of it—recycled a lot of his Kali material into terrible pickup lines, all because he liked the way Sam laughed when he said no.

And then one day—it wasn’t a particular day, nothing special about it––Gabriel made yet another terrible joke (“I probably taste like chocolate—hey, want to test my theory? In the interests of scientific research.”) and instead of laughing it off, Sam pulled him up by the collar and kissed him, hard.

Gabriel melted, twisting his hands into Sam’s shirt and holding on for dear life, and Sam was sweet and huge and warm all around him, and oh, one gigantic hand curved around Gabriel’s neck, one stroking down the small of his back—it was like his birthday just came early, like Christmas and the taste of chocolate, like the first espresso of the morning, like other awesome and unnecessary things that everyone loves and Gabriel probably would have said all that out loud if he hadn’t been so busy kissing Sam.

“Easy enough for you?” Sam asked him smugly, like any of this had ever been easy.

But Gabriel’s great at pretending, so he smirked and slid a hand up Sam’s chest. “Like breathing,” he said, and tried not to look as in over his head as he felt.

*

Gabriel’s phone rings when he’s still working his way through his green curry.

“Pick it up,” Kali instructs. 

“But—“ Gabriel protests, and she raps his wrist with the end of her fork.

“Pick it up,” she repeats, sternly, and he does, heart sinking.

It’s Sam.

“Hey,” Gabriel answers.

“Gabe,” Sam says, and shit, he sounds awful. “Can we talk, please?”

“About what?” Gabriel says, ache rising up in his chest, and Kali says his name, sharp and disapproving.

Sam laughs hollowly. “Uh, I don’t know. Maybe about the fact that you dumped me out of the blue, this morning? Or maybe about the fact that you—have sudden schizophrenic fits, now, or you decided to play a really, really not funny joke, or you—uh, have an evil twin brother, I don’t know. Just some kind of explanation, please?”

“Look—“ Gabriel begins, and then doesn’t know how to go on, not with this sucking empty thing in his chest. “Sam. I can’t. Uh. Shit.” This is why he wanted to leave a message in the first place.

“For god’s sake,” Kali snaps, and snatches the phone out of his hand while he blinks at her in shock. “Winchester? You’ve got the rest of the day off. Tell Lilith to cover anything that can’t wait until tomorrow. I’m taking him home, now. You have twenty minutes.” She hangs up.

“I hate you,” he breathes.

She smiles thinly. “You’ll thank me tomorrow, you miserable worm. Finish up; we’re leaving.”

*

The problem isn’t Sam. God, it should be obvious to anyone with eyes or ears or a soul that the problem isn’t Sam. Sam is wonderful. Sam is funny and a little bit goofy and thinks he can save the world with legalese and is ridiculously good at Halo. Even Kali likes Sam, and Kali doesn’t like anyone. Sam gets excited about organic vegetable markets and understands that Gabriel is kind of a dick and likes to kiss his neck when they fall asleep and wake up next to him and murmur “Gabe,” first thing when he wakes up, and it’s impossible, Sam is impossible, no one should have to deal with someone like Sam.

Because Gabriel’s never going to be able to keep him. That was a given from the start. Someone was going to come along—someone beautiful and blonde and probably female—who was happy to give Sam the life he really wants, the one Dean teases him about, the one he deserves the way he deserves someone who isn’t crazy, who can love him without being freaked out and paranoid about it all the time.

There was this moment, a couple weeks ago, when he and Sam and Dean were sprawled on the couch after watching a movie, and Castiel was getting up to grab everyone slices of the cobbler Gabriel had brought over. They were all exhausted, and kind of high, and Dean kicked Sam’s leg and said “How’re you liking the apple-pie life, Sammy?”

Gabriel picked the reference up later—Dean and Sam hadn’t had the easiest teenage years, both turning out bi when their dad wasn’t the most accepting guy in the world, so it was a code. Apple pie normal. The thing everybody wanted.

Lying there on the couch with his eyes closed and his head in Gabriel’s lap, Sam had answered: “What apple-pie life, Dean?”

Gabriel is a selfish asshole, yeah. He wanted his life to be sweet and sarcastic and all his, no sharing, so he’d opened a chocolate shop and decorated it like a World War II museum and got to make jokes about Nazi subs and work with people as bitter and snarky as he was and got to eat nutella for lunch every day he wanted to. He liked his life, before Sam--thought it was the absolute best he could have, under the circumstances. Sam is extra. Sam is too much. Sam isn’t just the whipped cream and the cherry and the chocolate sauce, he’s the perfect glass of wine, the dash of cayenne pepper, the secret ingredient that makes the whole damn dessert worth eating and Gabriel doesn't think he can bear having it taken away. It's like going on a diet versus waiting for the famine to hit--either way you're gonna starve, but denying yourself is your choice.

*

Kali pulls up at the curb and Gabriel slumps against the seatbelt.

“Get out of the car,” she says, not unsympathetically.

“Okay,” he agrees, not moving. “Sure thing. Getting right on that.”

She sighs. “Gabriel. He’s crazy about you. There isn’t a problem.”

He shoots her a betrayed look, and she glares back. There is a problem, she knows there’s a problem. The problem is Gabriel’s _head_.

“Look,” she says, and her voice softens. “Didn't anybody ever warn you about the course of love not running smooth? Talk to him, you idiot. He’s smarter than you are—he’ll figure you out.”

Gabriel chuckles wearily. “You steal all my best lines.”

“That so?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “Try listening to yourself sometime, angel.”

*

Sam is waiting outside his apartment, arms folded over his chest, chin tucked with his hair in his eyes, and when Gabriel walks up the stairs his head comes up. He looks desperate. Miserable. Angry. Other words that Gabriel never, ever wants Sam to look like.

Gabriel opens his mouth to say _I’m a headcase_ or _I need us to break up now so that I’ll survive it later,_ or _You were flirting with Ruby, though, weren’t you?_ or _You’re waiting for apple pie and I’m a cyanide bomb,_ but all that comes out is “Sam.”

Sam’s still huddled defensively against the door. “Yeah?” he says.

“So,” Gabriel begins, stalls, his mind blank. _So, Sammy, I’m in love with you, and I don’t want your annoying dick of a brother or his socially awkward boyfriend to hate me, and you have to promise never to change otherwise I might actually lose it again, I really might_.

Sam’s lips thin. “Look,” he says, in a low, hurt voice. “If there’s something I’ve done wrong—I’m really—I’m really sorry. I don’t. Uh, I don’t want to break up, okay? I don’t know where this is coming from.” He takes a deep breath, gearing himself up for more, but Gabriel can’t listen to more, so instead he launches himself at Sam, and Sam catches him, like always.

Gabriel grabs hold of Sam’s stupid long hair and kisses him, and Sam is and wrapped all around Gabriel, stupid huge hand on his hip and firm on his neck and Sam is gasping against Gabriel’s mouth and he tastes like stale coffee.

“What’s wrong,” Sam breathes against his lips, and Gabriel swallows and ducks his head against Sam’s neck, Sam’s pulse beating strong and fast against him, and he blurts out:

“You do realize I’m all there is, right?”

Sam strokes up and down his back. “Yeah,” he says, his voice deep, familiar, reassuring. “You crazy bastard. I know.” He kisses the crown of Gabriel’s head.

“Okay,” Gabriel whispers, and closes his eyes. “Just checking.”

 

(fin)


End file.
